It is conventional to dehydrate the oil utilizing heat and electrostatic coalescence to speed up the gravitational separation of the water from the oil in a vessel as exemplified by the Bull U.S. Pat. No. 4,919,777, and then deliver the separated water to another vessel such as that exemplified by my U.S. Pat. No. 5,484,534 for removal of the oil from the water using flotation or a similar means to speed up gravitational separation of the oil from the water. The conventional processes for removing water from the oil and the conventional processes for removing oil from the water as exemplified by the referenced patents consume considerable energy and are expensive. Further, as described by the Bull patent Column 3 lines 5 through 15, when the amount of water produced with the oil is a high percentage then a third vessel known as a Free Water Knockout is used in front of the oil dehydrator.
The principal object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus and process for combining all three of the functions, Free Water Knockout, Oil Dehydrator and Water Treater into a single vessel constructed in such a manner as to employ the principle of capillary attraction thereby providing a very energy efficient means for removing water from oil and oil from water at less capital expense and less operating expense and including an integral means for splitting the crude oil discharge from the vessel into disparate proportional flow streams, and a means of extracting extraneous material that accumulates at the water/oil interface from the vessel.